Successful soccer team gives a lift to Tijuana

Fast-rising Xolos reach their latest goal: playing for the title in Mexico’s top league

TIJUANA — The home locker room at Estadio Caliente has a domed ceiling with designs of Aztec warriors juggling soccer balls illuminated by alternating shades of blue and green mood lighting. The dome creates a unique acoustic effect, where the coach can be practically whispering and players can hear him clearly on the other side of the room.

It’s strangely appropriate. This soccer team, and this city, no longer has to shout to be heard.

Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente, or Xolos for short, suddenly finds itself in the finals of Mexico’s top league, hosting top-seeded Toluca at sold-out Estadio Caliente on Thursday night in the first leg of the two-game series. The second leg is Sunday at Toluca, and the team with the highest combined score is crowned champion.

Tijuana? A champion?

It’s something almost unfathomable for this city of 1.6 million people that has long been regarded as a Mexican backwater, a gritty border outpost considered unworthy of Mexico City’s refinements or the country’s proud culture — a place where people go to leave.

“I don’t think we’ve even realized the scope of it all because we’re concentrated so much on beating Toluca and winning the championship,” said Roberto Cornejo, the club’s assistant general manager who lives in Point Loma. “But you can notice it. People are just happy. There’s definitely a bounce in their step. Civic pride is up. Few things other than sports can create that.

“And it’s not just Tijuana. It’s Tecate, Mexicali, Ensenada, the South County of San Diego. It’s the whole region.”

Another sign: There’s a booming industry of counterfeit Xolos jerseys.

“It’s an issue,” Cornejo said. “But what’s the cliché? Imitation is the highest form of flattery.”

Liga MX, the newly branded first division, has no Super Bowl — no single game with two weeks of media hype that is the culmination of an endless schedule. Instead there are split seasons annually, the Apertura (open) and Clausura (closed), with a championship at the end of each. The Xolos had just four days to prepare for Toluca after dramatically eliminating Leon in the semifinals on Sunday.

But soccer is Mexico’s NFL in terms of interest and obsession, and Liga MX is rapidly becoming one of the better (and richer) leagues on the planet, a notch or two above Major League Soccer in the United States and about a half-dozen levels above San Diego’s indoor and outdoor teams. Midfielder Joe Corona is a member of the U.S. national team and a part-time starter for the Xolos.

All the more amazing, then, to think that the Xolos didn’t exist six years ago.

Jorge Hank Rhon, the owner of the Caliente sports-betting company and Tijuana’s former mayor, purchased rights to a second-division team in Tijuana and began building a soccer stadium in the far turn of the Agua Caliente thoroughbred racetrack. Estadio Caliente has since expanded to 20,000 seats, and construction is underway to complete an upper deck with luxury suites along the west sideline.